Matt Levine, Columnist

Adjectives, Uber and Internalizers

Also Yahoo and private equity, JPMorgan and robo-advisers, Libor and Harvard affinity fraud.

June 3, 2016 at 1:15 PM UTC

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

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Adjectives.

Morgan Stanley is changing its annual review process to get rid of the old 1-to-5 ranking scale and instead have reviewers "list up to five adjectives that describe the employees." My assumption is that all the adjectives will be positive -- this started with James Gorman "asking job candidates to name five of their positive attributes" -- but people will quickly figure out which adjectives are a 1 and which are a 5. "Congratulations, Jane, you were rated Aggressive, Committed, Ingratiating, Profitable and Also Profitable; you'll be promoted early." "Sorry, Dave, but you got Friendly, Neat, Epicurean, Warm-Blooded and Existent; clean out your desk by noon."